It is time to ignore our economic Eeyores and celebrate falling debt

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Flying high? The Chancellor described himself as being in a ‘Tiggerish’ mood, in reference to the upbeat ‘Winnie the Pooh’ characterCredit:
Egmont Publishing

What are you to do when you are obliged to give a performance without your usual props? Yesterday Philip Hammond delivered what you might term a Budget-lite, without either a Red Book or the usual red box. Moreover, as he had warned in advance, there were next to no substantive measures. Yet he felt he had to do something more than just act as the mouthpiece for the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in delivering its most recent forecasts.

He dealt with this problem in three ways: first, he made much of measures that had been announced and enacted before; second, he talked about various studies of possible measures soon to be undertaken; and third he hinted at a period of largesse to come....